Come and tell me your dull and unexciting news 14: Calmly through the day

[MissConductUS]

I've started a new one. Please join us and share the boring and mundane things happening in your world. It will be calming for all.

We felt a bit daft if I’m honest, like fussy precious newborn parents. With social distancing, the nurse came out to the car park to fetch him. When the vet came out initially he said “he seems to be OK, he doesn’t look to have any obvious signs of poisoning so it’s probably just a matter of giving him anti-nausea medication and sending him home, but I’ll run some blood tests to be on the safe side”. He was clearly surprised by the results. Sodding puts on a good show of being A-ok when he’s not right, which caught us out last time.

Weather is now appalling here. I’m glad I put the heating on.

Well, better be safe and feel daft.

DD went to sleep on her sofa and woke up in the night - she used her few moments awake before she climbed up into her bed to google "Do teeth have a sleep cycle?" Apparently not.

Power’s out here now. This is not exciting/novel for us, we got compensation from UK PowerNetwork last year due to the number of outages.

When our Bank Holidays fall on a weekend we get the next day in the week off and if say Christmas Day and Boxing Day are Sat and Sun we get Mon and Tues off.

I think the US gets a good few holidays - Labor Day, Memorial Day, MLK Day, Presidents Day, Fourth of July or the preceding Friday or following Monday, Columbus Day (controversial), and in some places, Pulaski Day. Also Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. Maybe locally Good Friday, depending on custom.

I took out a manual pasta making contraption that I bought a year ago in the second hand shop and tried to put it together but it defeated me. Either there's a page missing from the instruction book where the directions for clipping on the 'various shapes' accessory should be or I am a lot more mechanically challenged than usual today.

Patriots' Day is huge in Massachusetts.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriots%27_Day

Everyone gets the day off, they have parades and parties. I'm always a bit surprised when it comes around every year.

I have clean bedding! Didn’t iron it, but it still smells lovely and fresh

Sunbird, I'm impressed that anyone irons their bedding! I thought that went out of style a generation or two ago.

I stopped by my orthopedist's office on my way home and picked up a letter stating that I'm pending surgery and asking that I be excused from jury duty. That's a relief.

The male pizza crew is busy in the kitchen while I'm on MN.

I changed my bedding today. I didn't change DS's yet and I feel guilty about that. Although he went to bed with Mummy Penguin (favourite toy for now) and was quite happy.

I am a bedding ironer too sunbird

Occasionally I think I won't bother but, while it's ok, it's just not the same. Therefore I subject myself to the weekly tyranny for that blissful moment when I slip between them.

I have not ironed anything, or indeed worn anything that has been ironed since the beginning of the pandemic. Hanging on hangars while wet has been good enough for shirts for zoom meetings. DH irons DS's school trousers because I am no good at trousers.

I obviously don’t always do it, but if I do it doesn’t include fitted sheets, they’re just too awkward! If I’ve been able to line-dry everything then I don’t need to iron anyway. Do generally avoid buying clothes that need ironing…

School is closed for DS today due to flooding.

DD dyed her hair last night then sent me a message at 2am saying she was unwell but didn't want to wake me up, rare for her not to wake me up. She got up today showered and went off to school so seems OK now.

DH has gone to work.

Thanks for the vax recommendation Champagne they look good. Though we hire ours for about £25 a time but still that's 5 uses. With a rabbit and a fruit dropping DS it gets to critical depressingly quickly though 3/4s of it is collecting all the shredded paper.

I’ve got a Bissell small spot-cleaning thing. It’s very good, but labour intensive if you want to clean an area bigger than about a foot. Sometimes I do the rug with it, but it’s a pain.

Thanks Squirrel That's really useful to know - I suspect we may need something more like the Vax due to the area involved in the living room, its about 20 square metres, not all of it but certainly the metres immediately round DS sofa and a similar radius around the rabbit for his area of destruction. I've done it before by hand but it takes ages - for the spots I generally use Dr Beckmann's and that's great but hard work by hand for anything more than spots. DH is moaning about storage space but I think if we sort things we have enough.

DD is just back from school 'feeling like death'. Had a battle to get DS to do his schoolwork, first time he just walked off, second time shut himself in bathroom then I said its your GCSEs in 2 years you need to take this seriously and third time he did it phew. There's nothing like the amount they would get if school were open but better than nothing. It's the Martin Luther King speech I have a dream though one quiz question said who was President when King made his speech in 1964. I said to DS it can't have been Kennedy as he was dead, DS said it would be his Vice President so I put that and it marked it wrong. Then I thought hmm I'm sure Kennedy was president when the speech was made and looked it up and speech was 1963 not 1964 so was Kennedy and question was wrong date. DS loves it when we find error in question. Did next week's as well while I had DS's attention, that's on Malala.

I am WFH today - on a break now.

It is still disgustingly cold. The - again non hi vis wearing - workmen are replastering the yard. I have to listen to a variety of thumping noises.
DS is at school this week (hybrid system)

(rant: if you do not divide the number of positive tests by the number of tests taken as a whole you will not arrive at the correct percentage)

I waited in all morning for a BT engineer, but they never showed up. So once it got past the allotted time slot, DH and I loaded Spuddog into the car for his (Spuddog’s) inaugural ride in the new one, and a walk around the woods. Pound to a penny the engineer will have shown up while we were out, but tough luck, we waited in for five hours and that’s quite long enough!

spudlet They'll make it to be you fault anyway. I hope spuddog enjoyed the ride.
I have juste closed the tunnel and finished work for today.

And yes, I know it is supposed to be cold and miserable at this time of the year, but I really do not like it.

Spuddog was frankly smug about the whole thing. Although the boot is really high on the new car so we have to lift him out (we’ve lifted him in for years but normally he can get out under his own steam). It’s a very long way down for a rather old little spaniel.

DH was quite alarmed at the thought of a grubby dog getting into his beloved new shiny toy, but I placated him with a double layer of protective sheets until we can get a proper boot liner. DH is still saying he’s going to get the hoover out at the weekend though. Considering that one of our old cars (well ok - my car) once had a small plant growing quite happily in the muck under the door, this is quite a turnaround

What fond memories you've evoked spudlet, I was once sent packing by the Polish men who wash the cars in the car park as my car was so filthy they refused to even consider cleaning it.

I was once also banned from the jet wash as the big clods of mud that fell off blocked the drains and later flooded the workshops. I keep my car in much better shape these days

A spaniel - I am not a dog person but I have fond memories of a spaniel called Sandi. She belonged to my DM's cousin and we used to live next door. She died of old age.

He’s a pretty awesome little dog really, although he does have flatulence that could strip paint these days and is completely deaf. He can still be let off the lead as he’s very good at checking we’re in sight, but we have to be cautious and only do this where there are very few people (he will always go to say hello and not everyone likes it) and of course nowhere near livestock. But a rainy day in the woods was ideal for him as we didn’t see anyone else and he could bimble about at will.

@Champagneforeveryone I like to think of the muck as being like a protective coating, it means that when you have to squeeze into a hedge for a combine harvester there’s less chance of the paintwork getting scratched

@soddingkitten How is the patient today?

Lovely picture of Spuddog, thanks. It's funny how dogs love car rides and cats hate them. I think with my cats they associate it with visits to the hated vet where they are poked and prodded in a most undignified way.

My car has such a heavy coating of tree pollen on it today that it's almost a different color. Maybe I can talk DH into hooking up the hose and washing it this weekend.

Spuddog looks very cute!

I’m trying to write career aspirations for my annual appraisal, and it’s really difficult when in reality they amount to ‘do as little work as I can get away with until September ‘24 when I can leave this job and go part time’. That sort of honesty would be rather frowned upon!